


come into the water

by goldfwish



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, beach party, but doesn't really end happily either, doesn't end badly though, exile arc, no beta we die like it's our last canon death, towards the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfwish/pseuds/goldfwish
Summary: Tommy wakes up drowning.He isn’t in the ocean this time—though he wouldn’t be surprised if he was. No, this time, he’s sitting up in his bed, nestled in his sorry excuse for a tent, choking on his own wet breaths.He always wakes up drowning, these days.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, platonic - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	come into the water

**Author's Note:**

> the way this is just 4k of pure angst,,, not really sure if i like this but i spent too long writing it for me to not post it so here pls take my offering 
> 
> title is from mitski's song by the same name, which is a good song but has nothing to do with the fic other than it contains the word water lol

Tommy wakes up drowning.

He isn’t in the ocean this time—though he wouldn’t be surprised if he was. No, this time, he’s sitting up in his bed, nestled in his sorry excuse for a tent, choking on his own wet breaths.

He tries to inhale, willing oxygen to pull into his lungs, but his throat closes up, and he splutters as he coughs, drops of spit catching on the back of his hand as he raises it to his mouth. It’s then, as he looks down at his hand, at the rumpled sheets, that he realizes he’s crying. Tears run steadily down his face, dotting his blanket with impressions of their presence. The sight of them brings an embarrassed flush to his cheeks. He’s supposed to be stronger than this.

With hands that are only slightly shaky, Tommy rips the sheets off, getting to his feet. As he emerges from his tent into the bright morning, he scrubs a hand angrily at his eyes, willing his tears away.

He walks a few feet away from his tent, plopping down in the dirt. Elbows on knees and head cradled in his hands, Tommy stares at the grass, at the vibrant green of it, and tries to remember how to breathe. In, out. In, out.

He always wakes up drowning, these days.

It’s always the same dream. He falls into sleep, and emerges into a feeling, a pain in his ribs. In his lungs. A feeling of unending darkness, of cold, of fear. Of trying to breathe, and failing. Of sinking, slowly, as the sound of storming waves crashing over each other rings out above.

Then, someone, something, calling out to him, a kind voice trying to help. Tommy, reaching out for them, desperate, clawing. As he chokes, and sinks deeper still into darkness, the voice fades away, something he’ll never be able to grasp.

In the still of the morning, Tommy’s chest aches. Even as his breaths finally begin to even out and his tears subside, the ache stays. It always does.

When he feels he’s ready, Tommy stands up, brushes stray dirt off his trousers. He looks up, catches a glimpse of chairs in the sand beyond, and it’s then that he remembers.

_Oh, that’s right. Today’s the day of my party._

And at that thought, the ever present ache lifts, just a bit.

**——————————**

Though it’s early, there’s still much to do before his friends are due to arrive, and time sneaks up on Tommy. He busies himself all morning, and all of the early afternoon, too, preparing the area he had designated for today. After the chairs are perfectly spaced and aligned to the table, and then checked twice just to be sure the sand hadn’t moved them while he was walking around, Tommy sets to work on hanging decorations, livening up the outdoor space. That alone takes up several hours, having to kneel to set up wooden posts all around, and then stretch himself to hang colorful lights and streamers and banners from them. And he hasn’t even baked the cake yet.

By the time the cake is baked, cooled, frosted, and set on the table, the sun is low in the sky, and the tide has begun to fall back. _Perfect timing,_ he thinks to himself, standing back to admire his work. And with all that to occupy himself, he hasn’t even had time to feel sorry for himself at all today. _Minus this morning,_ a small thing inside him whispers, but he quickly shushes it. Mornings never count. Not here.

Content, Tommy sits himself down in one of the chairs to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Eventually, he sees someone walking down the path, and he scrambles up, almost knocking the chair over in his haste to greet them. He smiles, and is about to shout out an enthusiastic “Hello!” when he sees who it is.

Bright green clothing. Full netherite armor. White mask perched on his face.

_Oh. It’s Dream._

His face falls.

Before Tommy can compose himself, Dream raises a hand in a wave. “Hi!” he says, the word curving around a smile. That stupid mask may hide his face, but his voice has always been surprisingly expressive. “Where is everyone?”

Dream looks around as he enters the party area, curiously scanning around for anyone else. He doesn’t find anyone.

“I don’t know,” Tommy replies. “They’re all late.” _Or decided not to come,_ the small thing whispers again. He pushes it aside.

“The sun’s coming down already. Didn’t the invite say to be here like 15 minutes ago? Sorry I’m late, by the way. Got caught up in some stuff.”

Tommy waves the apology away. He’s starting to get annoyed. That’s the emotion he’s feeling, he tells himself. Annoyed. Not anything else. “I don’t know why no one else is here... Wilbur _did_ give out the invites, right?” 

Dream hums. “Yeah, and I heard he even told Tubbo about it in person. Wonder what happened.” At the mention of Tubbo, a nasty feeling swoops in Tommy’s stomach. _You just had to go and mention him, didn’t you,_ Tommy thinks bitterly. And he’d been doing so well today too, keeping him out of his head.

He glares at Dream, or tries to. His eyes end up catching somewhere about two inches up, at the glowing hue of his netherite helmet.

_Shit, I forgot._

“Shit,” Tommy says. “Wait, sorry, I forgot, here—“

He rushes to take off the armor he forgot he was still wearing, dropping the garments to the sand in front of Dream in a pile, like an offering. Helmet, boots, leg plates, chest plate. Once those are off, he pauses, and lays his axe on top of the pile as well.

“Sorry, here you go,” Tommy says again, and looks at Dream, only to find him staring back already. He says nothing, those dots for eyes boring into Tommy.

A moment passes, and then another. When Dream makes no move to pick up the pile, no move to dig a hole to put them in, no move to take out explosives from his pocket, Tommy’s annoyance grows. In fact, it grows so much that he can start to feel it in his throat, something bubbling up to scratch at the roof of his mouth.

Oddly enough, it almost tastes like salt water.

“Why aren’t you taking it.” Tommy says, breaking the silence. Finally, Dream stops looking at him, turning away with a careless shrug.

“It’s the day of your party. You can keep them,” he says, lighthearted, mild, almost… kind.

“Oh,” Tommy says. “…Thanks.”

Slowly, he takes back his axe. When Dream says nothing, he starts putting his armor back on. Chest plate, leg plates, boots, helmet. The metal digs into his skin. The water in his throat churns.

“Oh, cake!” comes an exclamation from behind him, and when he turns around, Dream has moved to the table and sat down in one of the chairs, the one directly across from where Tommy had been sitting earlier. Dream looks at him. “Can I have some?”

The expression in his voice is excited, stupidly so, especially just for some cake. Tommy looks away.

“Let’s… wait a little longer. See if anyone else shows up.” By now, the last dredges of the sunset are sinking below the horizon, and the moon has started to rise, its light making the ocean glimmer just slightly. He should probably turn on the fairy lights he hung up.

“Alright,” Dream says, tone pleasant, patient. Tommy’s skin begins to itch.

Ignoring it, he flicks on the fairy lights, and takes a seat, settling in to wait.

**——————————**

The itch has transformed itself into a stinging, writhing thing, coating Tommy, burrowing under his skin. Tommy scratches bitten fingernails at his arms, trying to alleviate the feeling, to no avail. In front of him, the cake sits. Whole. Uneaten.

“No one showed up,” Tommy says, a whisper. “They really just… didn’t show up.”

They’re still in the same chairs they sat themselves in two hours ago. Above them, the moon shines bright. Behind, there’s a gentle _whoosh_ as waves crash onto the shore. Beneath, the sand glitters under the attention of the stars.

It would be a pretty scene, if it weren’t for the fact Tommy’s world was currently falling down around him.

 _Wilbur delivered the invites, right? Maybe they just forgot to check their mailboxes!_ Tommy thinks somewhat frantically, eyes flickering. _But Tubbo…_

In the seat across, Dream looks on, no longer excited, but still patient. Always ever so patient. Since Tommy sat back down, Dream hasn’t moved an inch, hasn't said a word. Completely silent, completely still. Watching. Waiting. Tommy scratches harder at his skin.

He shouldn’t even be surprised, really. Why is he reacting like this? He knew this would happen. He’d known from the start. He’d known from the very beginning that—

“No one cares about me,” Tommy says to the air. Soft, fragile, spun from ice. A night chill seeps in through the gaps in his armor. He shivers, and it’s a bucket of ice thrown straight at his ribcage, the way it wracks his body so violently. It wakes something up in him, a switch flicked on. The salt water bubbles back up.

“No one cares about me, Dream!” he yells, and this time Dream reacts, broken from his stasis. He sits up straighter, tilts his head towards him. There’s a breath, like he’s about to speak, but Tommy interrupts before he can.

He pushes away from the table so abruptly that his chair topples over, laying on its side in the sand. He ignores it in favor of pacing back and forth along the line of the table, feet sinking with every step, arms crossed and held tight to his stomach. His hands claw frantically at his reddened skin.

“No one showed up to my party. No one showed up to my party, and it’s the one thing, the _one thing_ they had to do for me.” On his next step, his foot catches, and he stumbles, hands flying in front of him to catch himself. Tiny granules bite at the skin of his palms, rubbing them raw. He rights himself, but stays on the ground, hands back in their place on his arms in some sick sort of self-hug. He stares unseeingly at the sand.

“It’s the one thing they had to do for me,” he mutters to himself. “After exiling me and fucking me over, no one came with me, no one visited me. They didn’t even bother showing up to my party.” The saltwater rises, touches the back of his teeth. “I just wanted this _one thing…_ ”

It’s strange, how the brain works. How, in some moments, it decides to betray you. Screw you over. Remind you of things you don’t want to remember. In a way that hasn’t happened in weeks, not since that first day, that first day of being away from the only home he’s ever known, Tubbo’s voice rings in Tommy’s ears, sudden, cold.

_“You had one job, Tommy. One job, and you messed it up. You couldn’t do one thing for me, just one thing!”_

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. Distantly, he hears the scrape of a chair being pushed back.

_“One thing, and it was for your own good.”_

His lungs are starting to burn. Breathe, he tries to tell himself. In, out. In, out. In—

_“You’ve messed this up for no one but yourself.”_

The shuffle of footsteps, getting closer. His eyes are still closed.

_“Selfish.”_

A hand lands on Tommy’s shoulder, and he flinches so violently the hand immediately pulls away.

“Tommy?” Dream asks, sounding almost concerned. It makes the annoyance come back with a vengeance, burning him up, seething.

_Fuck this._

“Fuck this,” Tommy says, and he pushes himself up. He needs to get out of here. Not to L’manberg, not to... home. Just, away. He needs to get away. The burning in his lungs refuses to leave. He storms down the path, away from the beach, away from Dream, ripping off his armor as he goes. He’s starting to feel suffocated, the metal pressing into him, heavy, relentless. He tries to suck in a breath, and when his chest expands, it pushes against the chest plate, trapped, nowhere to go. His ribs ache.

It’s funny, that he would protest against Dream so vehemently, all those times he forced Tommy to hand over his armor and weapons to be destroyed, only to voluntarily give them up the one day Dream actually allows him to have them. He wonders if Tubbo would laugh at that.

Fuck.

Shut up, shut up.

He continues down the path, aimless, trying to force himself to only think of getting away. Away, away, away. But his mind is a traitor, and it whispers ___Tubbo___ to him, persistent. ___Tubbo. Tubbo. Tubbo TubboTubbo___ Tubbo—

“Shut up!” he shouts, and Dream makes a startled noise behind him. Tommy whips around, not noticing he followed him this entire time.

“I didn’t say anything?” Dream says, tilting his head. Tommy doesn’t bother to reply, just turns back around and keeps walking. He ignores the presence behind him, insistent on following. It’s not until he’s about to pass his tent that anything close to an idea of where he’s going pops into his head.

A purple glow in his periphery catches his attention, and Tommy turns his head to spot the corner of his ender chest, just barely visible through a sliver of a gap in the tent flap.

 _ _ _Tubbo,___ his mind sings.

Tubbo may not be here, but a piece of him is, tucked safely away, where no one else but Tommy can access. In the short time he's had it, the item has been a comfort. A lifeline, keeping the barest spark of hope left in him alive, a raft to keep Tommy barely afloat in this endless span of barren, lonely time stretching out before him.

But if Tubbo hates him so much, if he hates Tommy so much he won’t even make the effort to show up the one time he actually invites him, won’t even make the effort to take the hand outstretched, then what’s the point of holding onto that piece of him?

They were best friends, once upon a time.

Tommy makes a sharp turn, storming into his tent, kneeling by the chest. He throws it open, snatching the compass up from where it’s nestled between his music discs. The sight of the discs makes his heart burn.

___Remember what we fought for, Tubbo? What was it all for?_ _ _

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe they’re right. But Tommy guesses those people had never had water fill their lungs every morning, had never had salt sting their throats every other hour. Tommy guesses they’ve never known what it’s like to gasp for air every time the sun comes up, drowning under a question, a grief that’ll never be answered.

___Why did you do it, Tubbo? Why did you betray me?_ _ _

No. ___Fond___ is not a word Tommy would use to describe what he feels towards Tubbo.

What word he ___would___ use, he doesn’t know. It’s all too jumbled up in his brain, isn’t it?

In his hand, the compass flicks open, his fingers clumsy. The red needle points ever-faithfully to its own north star, an ocean away. Tommy moves his hand side to side, and as he does, the needle adjusts itself, swaying gently. Steady, unwavering. The metal is smooth under his touch. Inside the cover, two words are engraved. ___Your Tubbo.___

___Well, he’s not mine anymore, is he?_ _ _

Mind made up, Tommy closes the compass with a soft click. He shuts the ender chest and steps out of the tent, walking past Dream who was standing outside, waiting. When Dream catches sight of the compass clenched in Tommy’s hand, he makes a soft noise.

“Oh, the compass! You know, I heard Tubbo lost his the other day.”

Tommy stops walking.

“He what?” His voice comes out quiet, faint.

“Oh yeah, apparently he blew it up or something?” Dream shrugs. “Not really sure, but it’s gone now, I guess.” His words have a blasé air about them, his shoulders set in a casual tilt. Like the words mean nothing. They probably don't, to him.

But to Tommy... The idea that Tubbo had had a piece of Tommy with him—just as he had of Tubbo, a piece that he’d cherished and kept safe and thought about every single fucking day—that Tubbo had had that, and just—

“He just… threw it away?” Tommy says, and it’s just another thing to add onto the ever-growing list of questions he has, another thing to add onto his confusing mess of emotions.

Dream looks at him, the eyes of that goddamn mask searing into him, that blank smile curled innocently at him, taunting. “Well, I’m not really sure, I wasn’t there so I don’t know, but if he did… sounds like he doesn’t really care about you, huh?” The question makes the itch in his skin intensify even more. Tommy idly scratches at the back of his hand.

Blankly, he says, “No… no, I suppose he doesn’t.”

___He never has._ _ _

And with that, Tommy squeezes his hand around the compass and continues walking, down the path toward the portal, the purple swirl of it vibrant against the night sky. As dirt crunches under his shoes, the water in Tommy’s lungs churns, bubbles more with every step until inside him a roiling whirlpool twists, winds its way into every crevice of him. It hurts, burns.

And when he comes to the end of the path, reaches the edge of the portal, the smooth black of the obsidian frame just within arm’s reach, he doesn’t hesitate.

With the stars watching above and Dream following close behind, Tommy steps into the portal, not looking back.

**——————————**

As Tommy steps out, the dull red of netherrack fills his vision. It’s broken only by the grey and black of the path before him, cobble and obsidian he'd laid down himself, sweating buckets over the endless expanse of deadly lava below, muscles aching by the end of it, all in the hopes that someone, anyone, would come and visit him.

_Guess it was all for nothing._

“Give me your pickaxe,” Tommy says to Dream, holding out his free hand.

“Why?” Dream asks, slight alarm coloring his voice. Whether it’s because he’s worried for Tommy or worried for himself, Tommy doesn’t know, and doesn’t much care, either.

“Just for a second,” Tommy says, shaking his outstretched hand. Dream still doesn’t give it to him. Tommy tenses, knees locking. The water churns. Something in him explodes.

“Goddamnit, Dream!” he shouts. His hand trembles. “Just give me the fucking pickaxe!” He shuts his eyes tight, trying to will the taste of salt away. It doesn’t work. The writhing itch under his skin is almost unbearable now, burning between his veins, making its way into his heart, making it hammer, _thumpthumpthump._ There’s a stinging behind his eyelids and an ache in his chest and storming waves crashing in his ears and a voice in his head saying selfish, selfish, _selfish._

Then, the dry wood of a handle being pressed into his palm, the weight of it sturdy, the ring of it sharp. He whirls around, unable to think past the rushing in his ears.

_If no one… If Tubbo isn’t going to bother making the effort, then I’ll make sure no one else ever can._

Under his hands, stone and rock shatter, the sound of it echoing in the chasm of the nether, swallowed by the endless lava below. Cool, smooth obsidian slides against his knees as he crawls forward, the rips in his pants making his bare knees scrape, the faint scent of blood cutting through the air. He draws his arm back and swings it down, again and again, over and over and over again until his hands are bleeding too, sharp edges of newly exposed rock cutting into him, hard surfaces bruising him.

With every upward draw, Tommy thinks of that day, the words he’d said to Tubbo, how he’d pleaded, how he’d begged him to let him stay.

_This can’t be where we split now._

And with every downward swing, he remembers Tubbo’s stinging voice, his cutting words. The emptiness in his eyes, as he’d delivered his sentencing.

_“One thing for me, just one thing!”_

Up.

_It’s always been me and you._

Down.

_“You’ve messed this up for no one but yourself.”_

Up.

_Please._

Down.

_“Selfish.”_

He smashes and destroys until there is nothing left inside him to give, until the desperation in his bones collapses into exhausted resignation, until the stinging behind his eyelids turns into a choking stream of sobbing tears, then a trickle, then nothing.

Tommy straightens up, movements sluggish, wiping his face with the back of his hand. His arm falls limp at his side, the pickaxe dropping beside him. He turns, still on his knees, and finds a broken mess of a path behind him, fragmented and barely holding itself together.

Maybe Tubbo was right. Maybe Tommy really is selfish. He’d never meant for any of this to happen. Never meant for everything to escalate so fast. Those discs… those _goddamn_ discs… that jukebox on the hill, that bench… Tommy can still hear it, if he tries. The music, and Tubbo’s laughter, the way it’d trickle in softly, then explode into something booming, startled into it by a joke Tommy would tell, or a little silly dance he’d do, just to draw a reaction. He remembers that smile, the lighthearted warmth of it. Tubbo was always so warm.

Out here, even while knelt over acres and acres of lava, Tommy is anything but warm.

_Funny how it all turns out, eh Tubbo?_

Teenagers in a war, to mister president and his vice. Vice. Yeah, that’s a good word for Tommy. Faulting Tubbo for betraying him, for sending him away, for never visiting him. But what had he ever done to deserve anything else?

_One thing. Just one thing._

If he’d listened… If Tommy had just fucking listened…

But it doesn’t matter now, does it.

At his sides, his fingers clench around air. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost hold of the compass. He looks around, finding it a ways beyond, laying open on the cobble he had been standing on before his body took control. A few feet away from it, Dream leans on the side of the portal, netherite armor stark against obsidian. It's there that he patiently waits, watching. Always watching.

Slowly, Tommy stands, picking his way over the fractured path, scooping up the compass. He watches the way the needle spins, round and round, back and forth, in circles, aimless. He steps back closer toward the edge, and awry the needle goes, twitching and stupid.

Below him, red-orange lava glows. He takes another step closer to the edge, toes of his shoes just barely hanging off. He leans his head over, watching the liquid bubble and groan. What would it be like, he wonders idly. Would he burn before he drowns? Surely not. Not when it feels like the whirlpool inside him has already burned up all that he has left to offer. His hands grow sweaty. His heart pounds. The compass, smooth and untethered, starts to slip from his grip.

_Just one thing._

He wasn’t able to do that one thing for Tubbo. He wasn’t able to do it, and look where it landed him. Tommy, stuck in the middle of nowhere with no one but Dream for company, and Tubbo, hating Tommy, disappointed in him, sending him away from the only true warmth he's ever known. But maybe this, this one act, will make it so he’ll never have to disappoint Tubbo again. He had never wanted to disappoint him. He had only ever wanted to make him laugh, carefree, happy. Safe. At that thought, he can feel the whirlpool in his lungs already start to subside. The thought that with this, he can finally make Tubbo happy.

Yeah, Tubbo was definitely right. Tommy really is selfish.

He doesn’t realize he’s been leaning, inching forward dangerously over the edge, until a hand grabs him by the back of his shirt collar and hauls him backwards forcefully, practically throwing him back onto solid ground. His arms windmill frantically, desperately trying to keep his hold on his compass. He lands painfully on his backside, grunting with the impact. When he opens his eyes and looks up, Dream’s form looms over him. The smooth white of his mask turned a shadowed grey.

“It’s not your time to die yet, Tommy.”

The words could’ve been comforting, maybe even kind, if they weren’t said with that vaguely threatening lilt Dream is oh so good at. Tommy looks down at the compass again. The needle spins, still working ever hard, trying in vain to locate its north star. He doesn’t really know what the point is, anymore. He’s aimless. Unmoored, without his tether.

But then, with that tone in Dream’s voice, it’s not as if Tommy has a choice, really.

And so Tommy picks himself up, lets himself be ushered along by Dream back through the portal, down the path, back towards his tent. In the distance, the fairy lights on the beach flicker. The cake remains on the table, undisturbed. Gentle waves crash on the shore.

“I’m sorry no one came to your party, Tommy. I’ll make it up to you, somehow. We can have our own party, just the two of us, sometime. We don’t need the rest of them,” Dream says, getting ready to leave. Despite the way he’d pushed and shoved at Tommy earlier, the way he’d loomed, his body language now is open, inviting. And Tommy, well… he’ll take what he can get.

“…Yeah. Thanks, Dream,” Tommy says with a faint smile that Dream doesn’t return, though he wouldn’t be able to tell either way.

Dream leaves, and Tommy is left standing in the grass outside his tent, exhausted. Under the light of the moon, the compass seems to shine even brighter, and the needle once again points steady, out over the ocean, north star.

One thing, just one thing. One more chance. What Tommy would give, for just one more chance.

He clicks the compass shut, slipping into his tent. He puts the compass away, tucked in the ender chest, away from harm. Collapsing into bed, Tommy wraps the covers around himself, and falls into fitful sleep.

**——————————**

In the morning, he wakes up drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! and i'm sorry 


End file.
